I found an old blue colored candle on top of the fridge, put it on top of the chocolate cake and lit it. “For another year Mico, Happy Birthday!” I whispered to myself before blowing the candle. I held my cup of coffee; brought it up, made a toast before I took a sip. It felt weird celebrating life when it is being taken away from you. Worst of all, you don’t know when.
7:00 am, I checked my phone for SMS. No messages. I guess no one ever texts these days, except my parents. After a few minutes, my phone started beeping. A friend from New York posted on my wall, “Happy Birthday Mico! Amishu! Xoxo, Dindi.” She’s my girl. We’re BFFs back in college. We could talk non-stop about art, sex, anything and everything over a cup of coffee or San Mig Light in our favorite coffee shop a few steps away from the University. Before she left for NYC two years ago, we made a deal, that we will travel the world if she doesn’t get married before 35. I wanted to tell her I’m not OK and will never be ok unless someone discovers a cure for my absofuckinglutely deadly disease and that I might not be able to visit certain countries with current HIV ban. I shrugged the idea. I wanted to tell her physically so she can comfort me, hold my hands and let me cry on her shoulders like we used do. Before I was able to reply, people started flooding my Facebook with Happy Birthday posts. That’s the thing with internet, everything goes viral. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. It’s just impersonal. Not too long ago, people send greeting cards, plan surprises parties, or bring you cake and flowers. Now, everything is done on the virtual wall of your Facebook Page like a dog pissing on a wall, effortless and horrible.
I hit the showers around 7:30 for my usual hygiene ritual and started dressing up around 8. I want to look my best today in and out so I picked my favorite striped boxer brief, jeans, two-toned suit jacket over a white dress shirt and a pair of oxford leather shoes. I looked in the mirror and felt happy over my ensemble. A far cry from my usual T-shirt, jeans and sneakers work wear. It somehow encouraged me to go out and try to have some fun for the sake of my overrated natal date. It’s not every day you get to celebrate the first of your last birthdays right?
My day has been just about creating logo studies for a new clothing label for our client of five years. We have created dozens of hit seasonal campaigns for their existing brands and the pressure is on our team to come up with the best ideas for their new business venture. I might have consumed 4-5 sticks of Marlboro lights trying to calm myself from stress of meeting my deadline at exactly 4:40. That’s the downside of being a graphic artist. People think our job is easy because we’re using computer application instead of manual rendering. The truth is it’s as time consuming as doing an artwork by hand. Conception of a computer aided image goes through the same creative process. We’re only ahead from other “artists” in terms of output reproduction and revision which can be done in a matter of seconds. At 4:30 sharp, I presented the logos to my boss. He’s in his late 30’s I think, buff, was a model in his prime, gay and scuffily handsome. I was crushing on him for like the first two years of my stay in my ad agency but eventually gave up because my fantasy of us becoming us is never going to happen, not in a million years. He has a loving partner for a decade and goes for men his type, scruffy and gorgeously handsome. Today, he wore a crisp pink polo over khaki pants and a pair of Gucci moccasins which made me feel insecure once again of my overall demeanor. I told him my idea for the brand, handed him a print out, and discussed the logo one by one. This is the thing I know I’m good at and my primary source of confidence to face my boss every so often. After my presentation, he said the usual, “This is good. Thank you.” It’s also his way of saying you may leave. We never really had long discussions for unknown reasons. I can only assume he likes my ideas and the works I have presented or just completely the opposite. Probably it’s a gay thing; you understand each other just by looking at each other. Or perhaps it’s my birthday and he wanted to make my life a bit easier today. Before I stepped out of his office, he called my name and handed a brown envelope. “Happy Birthday!” he said in a very monotonous voice, gave me a little grin and went back to work on his laptop. I said thank you and left. I opened the envelope and found two Starbucks voucher worth 500 each. Great! A new Starbucks tumbler it is! Eric is a complete snob but a thoughtful and sweet boss. On my way home, I received multiple SMS from my friends asking me out to have fun but I told every one of them to move it sometime next week because my deadlines are sweeping me off of my social calendar. I don’t have a social calendar anymore. It was just a big lie, an excuse not to be merry and gay, at least for a couple of weeks until my mind is fully recovered from my HIV trauma.
Chapter 1
Start from the beginning
